George Harrison Didn’t Think He Was ‘Clever Enough’ to Do Anything but Play Guitar, According to Biographer Hunter Davies
George Harrison was the youngest member of The Beatles, but he was a talented enough guitar player that his age didn’t matter. John Lennon was slightly embarrassed by his younger bandmate at first, but he came to accept Harrison. Still, both Lennon and McCartney treated him as a younger brother. This began to wear on Harrison, who wondered if he wasn’t able to do anything besides play the guitar.
The guitarist was the youngest member of The Beatles
Harrison met McCartney on the bus to school, and the two bonded over their love of music. When McCartney joined Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen, he pushed for the group to welcome Harrison as well.
“I know this guy,” McCartney told Lennon, per the book George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door by Graeme Thomson. “He’s a bit young, but he’s good.”
Lennon was hesitant. Harrison looked much younger than the rest of the group, and he was embarrassed to be seen with him.
“George was the youngest, and it was obvious,” author Tony Bramwell said. “He looked very young, even younger than his years. John Lennon didn’t particularly like him and didn’t want him in the band. He regarded him as too young, a kid, but Paul was pushing for him.”
George Harrison worried that he couldn’t do anything except play guitar
Harrison proved himself as a guitarist, but he felt that his bandmates often overlooked his contributions. It didn’t help that other people doubted what he brought to the band.
“He just didn’t seem as witty or as clever,” Ivan Vaughn, a friend of Lennon and McCartney, said, per The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies.
Astrid Kirchherr, who met the band in Hamburg, said Harrison took longer to develop than his bandmates.
“He was a lovely little boy,” she said. “He was just little George. We never judged him in any way, the way we used to work out how intelligent or clever Stu, John, and Paul were. He didn’t develop as quickly as the others had done.”
She noted that Harrison seemed to recognize this and often made self-deprecating jokes.
“But he wasn’t stupid. No one thought that for one minute,” she said. “He made lovely jokes at his own expense, sending himself up for being young. I gave them all their Christmas presents one year, all wrapped up. John opened his first and it was an Olympia Press version of the Marquis de Sade. George picked up his and said, ‘What’s in mine then, comics?'”
Harrison focused intently on his guitar playing, and according to Davies, he didn’t attempt to do much else. The biographer explained that “he thought he wasn’t clever enough.”
George Harrison found success outside of playing the guitar
Harrison grew a great deal while in The Beatles and gained the confidence necessary to explore interests outside the guitar. He was the only Beatle interested in the business end of things and paid close attention to finances.
“He was always very serious about his music, and the money,” his mother, Louise, said. “He always wanted to know how much they were getting.”
After The Beatles broke up, Harrison founded a record company, Dark Horse Records, and a film production company, HandMade Films. He dedicated himself to gardening on his expansive estate. His most long-standing interest outside of music, though, was his spiritual life. It gave him a sense of peace in the unending chaos of fame.
“It wasn’t until the experience of the 60s really hit,” he said in 1982, per The Guardian. “You know, having been successful and meeting everybody we thought worth meeting and finding out they weren’t worth meeting, and having had more hit records than everybody else and having done it bigger than everybody else. It was like reaching the top of a wall and then looking over and seeing that there’s so much more on the other side. So I felt it was part of my duty to say, ‘Oh, OK, maybe you are thinking this is all you need — to be rich and famous — but actually it isn’t.'”
